Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks New York Sessions

Genre: Folk, singer/songwriter
Sounds like: It sounds like Bob Dylan

I'm not really under any impression that this two-bit blog is going to improve or clarify on any of the volumes written about Dylan over the past 40+ years. I'm posting this mostly because 1) it's awesome, and 2) it's interesting.

To cut it short, Dylan mostly went through the early '70s just pissing everybody off and releasing stuff that didn't sound like Classic Dylan. Supposedly he was going through a divorce and whatnot as well (check out Sara off of Desire for some classic bitter heartbreak). Anyways, this album is the ORIGINAL version of Blood on the Tracks done mostly as just Dylan, his guitar and some harmonica. It's basically a throwback to his early stuff before he went Judas and started playing electric guitar with a backup band. He eventually scrapped this album and did the official BOTT with a full band, changing the feel of the songs pretty dramatically.

People argue a lot about which version is "better." I would put my money on this version. The subject matter alone makes it more heartfelt with Just Dylan and a lot of the more bitter elements ("idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth") tend to hit a little harder. If You See Her Say Hello is worth the listen if you're too lazy to do a track-by-track comparison of the whole thing. I'm not willing to sort through all the horrible cover songs on Youtube so you're on your own for that.

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